Story:Rain's Ascent/Characters
Main Characters Noa Lentic= ;Background Noa hails from the mountains of Ilocos, the sparsely populated central region of the world of Rain's Ascent. It is the home he has known all his life: a land he has never planned to leave, a mother that he has never known, and a father, Germain, that has never really known him. With each year that passes, Germain Lentic retreats deeper into a state of mental paralysis, and his son needs to work harder to support him. Few neighbors live among the ragged peaks, but Noa finds help from Cleric Stern, a devotee of the Virgan religion that stretches across Luzon and most of Ilocos. Noa adheres to the faith with strict dedication; he considers a book filled with prayers and prose one of his closest companions. The other is his owl friend, Sage, a serene and faithful bird that has been at his side ever since he helped mend a broken wing. The desire to seek more to life has never occurred to him, even when visited by the torrential rains of Mindanao or the rare traveling caravan threading between Luzon and Visaya. For Noa, the most sublime aspect of life is prayer, the most fanciful earthly whims are nothing beneath the devotion to his tiny family. Ilocos is a land of great ascetism; what better place to contemplate heaven? So Noa says, speaking to rocks, to birds, to his father, to the clergy - none of whom challenge him. It is an idyllic and ignorant life at the roof of the world - as the skies begin to fall. ;Appearance Noa is a wiry young man, sporting a tan complexion darkened from exposure to the sun, and short, spiked dark brown hair. His eyes are perhaps his only notable feature, clear and blue as a drop of rain falling through the sky. While living in the high altitudes of Ilocos, Noa dressed in a heavy coat and double pants, which afforded protection against the cold and rough terrain. Upon reaching Luzon, Noa adopts the attire of a Virgan devotee, wearing a sleeveless teal tunic with navy trim over a similarly colored undershirt, along with a pair of baggy black shorts. Noa's crossbow rests on his left arm and is triggered by the right hand. When the situation calls for it, the crossbow can be compressed and stored within a satchel connected to a loose-fitting leather belt around Noa's waist. ;Personality Noa's youth, inexperience, and isolation make him the poster child for naivety. While intelligent and well-spoken, he finds the best way to express himself is through the medium of his beliefs. This may come across as close-minded and ignorant to some people outside of Luzon, but Noa espouses a quiet sort of faith. He is not one to proselytize, but is not adept at defending his beliefs from those who challenge them, either. As a result, he is at the onset of the story a rather sensitive kid who reconciles problems internally, rather than conflicting with others. He is almost always agreeable, composed, and hopeful, but when he isn't, it is quite easy for others to see when he is upset, despite his efforts to project otherwise. Noa tries his best to establish friendships with the people he meets during the events of ''Rain's Ascent''. He is particularly excited to explore the land of Luzon, but soon finds his idealized view of the tenets of his faith are at odds with reality. ;Relationships |-| Riyoku= ;Background Morbid humor~ ;Appearance Riyoku is a young woman with a soft face and piercing purple eyes, with long, straight black and violet hair. Like most people who hail from Mindanao, she has extremely pale, almost marble skin, which contrasts deeply with her deep purple ensemble. Her outer jacket has a prominent hood that she neglects to wear, with long, belled sleeves and a swallowtail back. Riyoku's Quill, at a distance, appears to be indistinguishable from a normal writing apparatus, save for its transparent sheen. When activated, however, it oscillates colors depending on the type of ink it is exuding. It can hover in midair under Riyoku's control, or br stashed in the cavernous bell sleeves of her outfit, which also house a variety of throwing knives for emergency uses. ;Personality Riyoku is often breezy and irreverent, and holds very little regard for what other people think of her. This is not to say she approaches all interactions with perpetual disdain; rather, she does not attempt to mold what she says for the emotional benefit of a conversational partner. Though she has a high threshold for people she will respect, she likes people who have flaws, yet are honest about them. Riyoku is fiercely loyal to those she respects and prefers to show her regard with actions instead of of words. Indeed, those she considers closest to her are often the target of her most colorful slurs. She does occasionally engage in bouts of lighthearted, upbeat banter, especially when around Nianys. Riyoku's rigidity when it comes to the emotions of others is a seemingly sharp contrast to the fluid, transitive strokes of her Quill. ;Combat ;Relationships |-| Lycoris Bishop= ;Background The youngest child and only son of a proud and once well-regarded military family, Lycoris was always destined for an officer's post in the Luzonian military. With two doting older sisters and supportive parents, he enjoyed a happy and free childhood that ended abruptly at age 11 with his father's failure in a military campaign in southern Ilocos. The loss against Visayan forces, with whom Luzon had been warring for 2 years, resulted in the humiliating Truce of Mt. Seir. Under the conditions of the truce, Luzon acquiesced to Visaya's demand that the mainland of Ilocos be respected as neutral territory, to be governed locally by the sparse tribes that occupied it. The Bishop's patriarch was never the same after that - originally a confident man considered the de facto expert in military strategy, he was reduced politically by his peers and personally by his own self-guilt. It was initially a dark time, but Lycoris remembers with pride and appreciation that his father never fell so far as to neglect or lash out at his own family. He continued to work at a demoted level within the army's infrastructure, regaining a moderate amount of respect and paving the way for his son's easy entry into academy. Luzon's mending relationship with Visaya and the cordial peace that followed helped as well, and despite this peace, Lycoris still knew he wanted to join the military. Bishop's use of his surname is not an attempt to wield its influence; indeed, by the time he reached his 20's, the name was not the icon it used to be. Frankly, he just hates the name "Lycoris", and doesn't really care if "Bishop" stirs up antipathy among his father's old detractors. As he rose in the ranks, Bishop always put forth a respectable but not spectacular effort, uninterested in what might be labeled as "making up" for the Truce of Mt. Seir. He sees his current position as sergeant as more than enough responsibility, and takes more interest in maintaining good relationships with his squad members rather than seeking out the next rung on the ladder upwards. ;Appearance Like the flower his mother unfortunately named him for, Bishop's hair is a shock of bright, burnt red, which he keeps short as per military regulations. He knows how to turn on the charm, and his physical features definitely help: a decently chiseled face with some hints of stubble, usually with a mellow or faintly playful expression. As an officer in the Central Highlands Corps (CHC), he wears a black, red, and white leather and cloth based set of armor (with the exception of plated vambraces) that is intended for insulation and comfort in the Ilocosan mountains. Bishop's preference for flared collars usually obscures the stripes on his shoulder vestments identifying him as a sergeant, and this sometimes results in his fellow officers mistaking him for a common soldier, and treating him as such. Bishop somewhat offsets the lightness and comfort of his garb by outfitting himself with oversized pauldrons and a massive bladed lantern shield, eschewing the more manageable weapons that most of his squad wields. The lantern shield is composed of several materials; the outer shell is a busy matrix of metals, coated with predominantly brown paint to blend in with the Ilocosan landscape. Underneath this surface lies a layer of lighter composites that reduce the weight of the shield and assist in absorbing shock. Protruding from the shield are two parallel blades that are excellent in catching enemy weapons and twisting them uselessly away. Bishop's shield, combined with his pauldron, covers the entire length of his arm, and should he adopt a crouching position, a good proportion of his body. Each pauldron is layered similarly to the lantern shield, is detachable from the chest armor, and can be used as a secondary shield if needed. Bishop takes great pride and care of his armor, seeing it as a reflection of his career. Even-tempered and generally lenient, Bishop enjoys the loyalty of the vast majority of the men under his command, with a few outliers that he prefers to deal with a minimal level of strictness. His luck with the ladies, however, is notoriously bad. It would be unfair to describe him as a womanizer; the mix of career demands, a somewhat unattached personality, and hyperexpectant girlfriends have resulted in at least four botched relationships. When the higher-ups in the Palatine sought to fill an undesired vacancy in the Ilocos patrol rotation, Bishop welcomed the chance to take a post removed from the rigidity and politics of Luzon's central command. He's not one to challenge authority, but underneath the lax appearance, he holds a strong (though sometimes grudging) conviction for doing the right thing. ;Combat ;Relationships |-| Linus Sadako= ;Background The son of a geologist and a flourishing artist, Linus was raised in the central Luzonian city of Iconia. Technologically progressive and more secular than the rest of the peninsula, Iconia provided a cultivated environment for Linus to learn and grow in its likeness. Scholarly even at a young age, he loved in equal measures the galleries filled by his father and scientific journals that often included papers by his mother. The deeper meaning of these pursuits can tire a child out, however, but Linus never tired of the company of his parents and younger sister, Petra. Affluent and popular in their community, the family could often be seen attending an Iconian dance retinue or enjoying a quiet picnic along the branching banks of the great Auroria River. As Petra grew older, however, it became from her short stature and weakness, especially compared to the willowy tallness of her brother, that she suffered from a condition unsolvable by medical experts. By the time Petra was 6, she had regressed in health to a point where she was unable to walk, but her brother made sure she could still explore the world on his shoulders. Even that could not last, as a year later the girl was confined to her bed. Linus couldn't understand why his sister had been so unfairly crippled when he himself was healthy. His parents, while not ardent followers of the Virgan faith, attempted to console their son by explaining that Petra's life, like all lives, were in the hands of God. All of Linus's attempts to help his sister came to nothing: he could not share his food, his studies, or any of his joys with a sister that drifted in and out of consciousness. The sole exception was the medium of art and color. Petra would often wake up from another ineffectual medical procedure to find a small crystalline mineral or a watercolor of the Auroria on her bedside. These tokens were soon joined by a menagerie of folded paper animals, the product of Linus's determination to keep his sister alive through happiness. He succeeded only by half: in the last year of her life, Petra Sadako felt like she was the most loved person on earth. But she chose, fatefully, to put an end to the continued invasive operations that only sustained her pain. It was unheard of for parents to defer entirely to a child's decision on end of life care, but the Sadakos, grim-faced, complied with their daughter's request. She died, not in the cold embrace of a hospital room, but at home, surrounded by the people she loved. The remaining members of the family, though brought low, rallied. Iconian dilettantes widely agreed that Lawrence Sadako's works following the death of his daughter far outshone those previous, infused with a complex and piercing vitality. Agatha Sadako rose further among the ranks of respected geologists, brokering a cooperative volcanic study between Visaya and Luzon following the end of their two-year war. And Linus, now the only child, threw himself with a renewed furor into his studies. He set his sights on the field of medicinal physics, frustrated with the failure of surgeons to save his sister. Though the field is small and funding is hard-won, Linus's small Iconian lab is the nexus of Luzon's most advanced laser technology. Paintings by his father grace the sleek and warm facility hallways, and paper cranes sit on tangled tubes connected to a maze of machines juggling subatomic particles. They perch on the precipice of a new scientific era, one wrought by the same hands that painstakingly crafted them. ;Appearance ;Personality ;Combat ;Relationships |-| Ts'yn Song= ;Background The reclamation of Visaya by its native peoples, the ''Seir'kai'', required no war. They rode the receding winds of the ''Rha'ank'', or, as the unfortunate foreign occupiers fearfully named it, the "Sand Devil". In the span of a day, 90% of the population of northwestern Visaya was wiped out, the victims mostly being of the ruling Luzonian class that had colonized the region for the past 300 years. The Seir'kai, once marginalized, thus engaged and conquered an imperialist force in utter disarray. Its leaders, of the Song family, soon recognized that revenge against their former oppressors, who now owned nothing, would yield nothing. And so, from ashen miles of corpse-filled dust, from centuries of oppression and assimilation, from the near extinction of their culture, did the second Visayan nation rise again. Ao'te Song is remembered not so much for her military conquest of Onyx but her mercy and efficiency in pursuing policy that transformed the sand-drowned desert into fertile and livable land, for ''Seir'kai'' and foreigner alike. Her daughter, Su'Pa, ruled for three decades in the spirit of her mother, but a re-ascendant Luzon, smarting from the loss of its proxy ally in Visaya, forced her to change course. Confronted with an increasingly belligerent string of Luzonian colonists threading their way across the southern coast of Ilocos, she instigated a challenge that soon blossomed into outright war. No ''Rha'ank'' stirred this time, sixty years later, but the ''Seir'Kai'' had come a long way since that fateful day. Again Visaya repeled its western rival, and in the resulting truce legitimized the political buffer region of Ilocos. Upon the shoulders of these two giants stand the current court: First Dynast and Sovereign Ao'ze, Second Dynast Ku'li, and by general consensus the last and least, Third Dynast Ts'yn. The youngest sister is a child of the new, industrial Visayan reality. Onyx, once reduced to a graveyard, now stands as the manufacturing powerhouse of the entire continent. Yet Ts'yn Song, as her sisters labor to expand the influence of their hard-earned homeland, prefers to spend her time outside the capital. In the company of customs preserved even under the harshest imperialistic pressure, she remains defiant of the ministerial expectations set upon her as a dynast. The Pasagarde Wildlife Preserve, like many institutions created before the ''Rha'ank'', retains its Luzonian name, a harmonizing measure enacted by Ao'te and respected by her descendants. Once merely no more than a zoo, Pasagarde is now a wild efflorescence of vintage ''Seir'Kai'' culture, a roaring beast of a settlement that with its paradoxical vibrancy and lushness make Onyx seem pedestrian and tired. Though Ts'yn calls this place home, she really spends no time actually ruling it, instead stalking the theatres, the jungles, the nightclubs - all the places deemed improper for a dynast to set foot upon, much less highly frequent. And frequent them she does, spending her days among the wildlife and her nights roaring down the streets of downtown Pasagarde. Despite what some patricians might say, Ts'yn can actually be quite responsible - to the pursuits she's interested in. She tends the fishcats, all the animals love her, she stars in theatre, all the patrons love her - and hey, being the Third Dynast helps. ;Appearance ;Personality ;Combat ;Relationships Ilocos Characters Germain Lentic= |-| Stern= Luzon Characters Visaya Characters Ao'ze Song= |-| Ku'li Song= |-| Co'ru Song= Mindanao Characters Other Characters